


too late

by days4daisy



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Extra Treat, M/M, Other, Post-Doctor Strange (2016), Rape/Non-con Elements, Torture, Violence, Xeno, all the way through, dream walking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-04-05 19:55:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19047292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/days4daisy/pseuds/days4daisy
Summary: Tonight is the night Karl Mordo will kill Stephen Strange. But someone else beats him to it, someone who never left.





	too late

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/gifts).



> Hope you like this treat, rosecake! :)

Within a dream there is no exposition.

Immersion is immediate and violent. Mordo understands, boots plastered to the plains of another dimension. Existence was vast and timeless here once. Before the twist of green wrists. “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”

He sounds defeated, Strange. Defeated, though he has the upper hand. Defeated beyond the tantrums of his early training. Strange's own weakness disgusted him in those days, as did his hands. His hands brought him fame once, and money. The boredom of a life half-lived.

Strange’s body splinters under the dark lord's ire. He rises with that same weary look. “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”

The dark lord burns Strange alive this time.

“Dormammu-”

The dark lord tears Strange’s face from his skull.

“Dormammu-”

Dormammu rips Strange’s arms and legs off in one motion. He spouts exhales with the force of hurricane winds. Summons energy well above the threshold of a mortal body.

Dormammu turns his vast dimension to liquid. Strange flails and chokes.

As Mordo watches, he wonders if he would put himself in the dark lord’s place. Would he rip Strange’s arms from their sockets and watch him bleed across the plains. Such a thing would be unnatural and a violation of power.

But then, so is Strange. His arrogance is a danger to millions. There has been no greater student of craft. None more dedicated to the arduous task of betterment. But books alone do not make a sorcerer. Books alone will not save them if they cannot trust the wielder of their knowledge.

***

A shadow. Odd and distant.

A room with wooden walls and large iron-barred windows. Its black drapes are drawn, the room bathed in dark. Only the golden spear of power Mordo glows.

The time for deliberation is over. Mordo’s decision is long made.

Mordo moves to strike, but stops. Someone is already here.

***

“Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”

Coils of dark energy slither around Strange’s ankles. They burn away his pants and the skin underneath. Strange does not scream while blood spills into his boots. One with Strange’s hands may no longer feel pain like normal men.

Or this scene may be a recycled too. Even pain becomes tedious with the passage of time.

***

Mordo wants Strange’s pain.

The act will be unselfish. Removing Stephen Strange will erase a critical threat to their reality. Strange does not deserve to wear the Eye of Agamotto. Look at what the Ancient One’s lies wrought them. Strange’s life, his great power, will one day ruin their universe beyond repair.

But Mordo hopes Strange hurts too. He wants Strange to feel the fear of breaking the natural law. To understand the weight of consequence before his light extinguishes from this reality.

Mordo is so close, but someone is already here. Someone, or something.

***

Strange’s body hits the ground like a rag doll.

Arm upon vine-like arm descend upon him. Dormammu is infinite. The dark lord’s many hands rip his clothing away. Chunks of skin too. Strange quivers. His shielding magic fails.

Strange is weary beyond the endurance of a human body. But his pain-bleary eyes are still very much awake.

***

Someone, or something, is already here.

Mordo’s chest tightens. He is too late to have Strange first. To punish him as he should be punished. Someone has beat Mordo to the task.

Jealousy gnaws at Mordo’s belly. It is Mordo who trained Strange, and Mordo who should end him. Strange’s defeat cannot come at the hands of one who does not respect the natural law.

Mordo grasps his spear of light in one hand. His other rests against Strange’s forehead.

From this distance, Mordo sees that there is blood around Strange’s eyes. Blood, and something more. The deepest pit of depravity. The endless void of Dormammu’s dimension.

It is not that someone is already here, it is that someone never left.

***

Mordo’s knees submerge in darkness like thick marshland at Strange's side. The pulse of this strange place itches on his skin.

Mordo eyes the cuffs of power turning lazy, green circles around Strange’s wrists. “This is unwise,” Mordo says.

Strange grimaces. He is utterly naked, stripped bare of clothing and his unflinching pride. The Eye sits against his stomach. His scarred fingers shiver against his sides.

Tendrils of darkness - ten, fifteen, twenty - swim up Strange’s thighs. Twenty more coil like springs around Strange's blood-caked ankles. Another ten rip Strange's arms to the side.

The dark lord ignores Mordo, as if the once-prized pupil of the Kamar-Taj is unworthy of attention.

Dormammu cannot pry away Strange’s bracelets of time, so he forms his own cuffs with his endless existence. Strange’s body drowns under stripes of midnight.

At once they squeeze, and Strange arches with a miserable groan. In the darkness, Mordo cannot make out every place Strange bleeds from. Red mists up like rain evaporating on a hot day. Strange’s body becomes a brand of ownership. Fitting; the Ancient One’s shame was carved into her forehead. Strange will wear the weight of his sins everywhere else.

Mordo sets a hand on Strange’s forehead. Strange’s mind is blank, save for wave upon wave of weariness. Strange’s eyelids droop. He turns towards Mordo, pain unsteady on his lips.

Selfish of him to turn towards Mordo in a moment of loss. After all the time Mordo gave him, all the lessons, all the trust. It was Mordo who swayed the Ancient One to permit Strange to join their company. Mordo who trained with him early and late. Mordo who saw to his hands, and who taught him with tough love because he believed Strange worthy of it.

Mordo should not watch the dark lord’s many arms scale Strange’s thighs. Or Strange’s hips rise at the sensation of darkness around his cock. Or Strange’s teeth gritting when two, three, four - how many arms - squirm their way into his body.

Strange twists under the hand Mordo holds to his forehead. Fear pulses through their joined skin, but Strange’s pleasure is electric too.

“To think,” Mordo murmurs, “I believed I'd found something special in you. I was wrong. I’m wrong often when it comes to you, Strange.”

Memories turn his words bitter. Strange’s long body stretched beneath his. The chill in his winter-pale skin after Everest. Strange's cold hands shaking against Mordo’s back. The warmth of his breaths dancing down Mordo's neck.

Strange’s pulse is like a trickle of water on a drain. Its dull tap-tapping becomes a steady stream. One throb rolls upon the next. A current of blood. Beat after beat after beat.

Strange's pain hits Mordo like a knife through the skin. It is a sensation Mordo knows well, experienced many times in his youth. He believed his life’s course straightened under the Ancient One’s tutelage. Mordo believed he was learning about power, patience, and the balance in all things. Liars, she and Strange both.

Strange's eyes are dead, porous things. Dull and bleary, rimmed with the shadowed promise of the void. Within him, the dark lord moves ever deeper. Dormammu claims Strange's insides in the name of everlasting torment.

Strange will not yield, Mordo knows this. He will not end the loop, even with his insides stretched beyond the limits of the human body. As Strange tumbles past the point of pleasure and his once interested cock shrivels in horror.

Strange’s breath chokes in his throat. He coughs, and red splatters out. His legs are wrenched wider, and more of Dormammu presses forth. Arms upon arms. Twenty now, or more. Each jockeys for position, squirming for a privileged place inside. Strange’s belly balloons around their multitude. There is so much inside him. Mordo sees his navel squirm, the dark lord’s possessive touch beneath.

Strange's lifeless gaze sits on Mordo. In this realm without light, his eyes still seem to glow. Magenta flares, yellow pops, green fields, blues around the iris. The skin around his eyes sinks like quicksand. Strange is becoming space itself, his humanity melting into the abyss of the universe. He will become a black hole, an open sore between dimensions.

Mordo can think of no more fitting end. The self-proclaimed savior of the world reduced to the instrument of its demise. There can be no natural order in this life. Let it burn then, Strange and all who once felt safe under his protection. Let him fall, and their reality with it.

Strange’s dead eyes disappear behind eyelids burned and breaking. His heartbeat slows to a faint drip-drip. Strange’s chest bubbles under the prod of thirty arms, forty now. Dormammu snaps Strange’s legs to force his thighs wider. Strange does not seem to notice, cannot even muster a shudder at the pain.

Sudden fear flutters in Mordo’s chest. “Up, Strange,” he hisses. “Get up and fight.”

Another dozen arms claw for permission to enter. Mordo does not want to see anymore. The wreck between Strange’s thighs or the unnatural direction of his broken legs. The swelling of his body around the invasion of so many. The puffiness of his belly, the nauseating swim of his chest.

Strange begins to choke. A cough becomes a gag, and mounts to wheezed, desperate gasps. His throat is tight. A round nub drags up the column. It isn’t Strange's adam’s apple, the motion at too severe an angle.

Sweat chills Mordo's neck. “ _Fight_ , Strange,” Mordo demands. “Fight now!”

Strange’s lifeless gaze sloshes in Mordo’s direction. He stutters around sounds that refuse to materialize into words.

After a moment, Strange closes his eyes, and his forehead sinks against Mordo’s knee. The infinite void cracks through his cheeks like acid tears. Dormammu's dimension glitters beneath, a promise of paradise and damnation.

From Mordo’s hand, a spear of light materializes. It is bright in this void, piercing the dark lord’s realm. Dormammu growls in warning. It is the first time he acknowledges Mordo’s existence.

With a shout, Mordo drives his spear through Strange’s chest. Strange's body shivers in acceptance of its death blow.

A flash of green light follows, a fade between scenes.

“Dormammu, I’ve come to-” Strange’s words cut off behind the hand pressed to his mouth.

Mordo does not remove his hand until he is sure Strange is no longer trying to speak. “I said ‘up,’” Mordo says. “Get up and fight, Strange. Get _up_.”

A confused crease bridges between Strange's brows. His mouth slips open, but it takes a moment for him to speak. “Why are you here?” Strange asks.

The dark lord’s realm becomes an open field of empty. No color. No booming threats. Nothing.

***

The fuzzy outline of wood walls and iron gated windows. A bed, and Strange lying on his back. There is no blood on his face or cracks through his skin exposing the infinite reach of space.

Mordo kneels beside Strange’s bed, his hand still on Strange’s forehead. Strange frowns at Mordo’s sleeve dangling above his nose. He turns towards Mordo, his gaze soft and puzzled.

Strange wants to ask something, Mordo can tell. Strange clenches his teeth when he wants to speak but does not trust himself to say the right thing. Mordo used to find it an endearing trait. He used to find many things endearing long ago.

After a quiet minute, Strange closes his eyes and turns back towards the ceiling. Mordo knows a dare when he sees one. Strange sighs and squeezes hands against his beat up old sweatpants.

Mordo stands from his side, stiff with anger. “I told you to fight,” he hisses.

Mordo retreats through Strange’s bedroom door, away from the best chance he may ever have to kill his ex-pupil. Away from dreams that are not dreams. Away from yet another attempt to destroy their universe thwarted.

Away from eyes, open again, that follow Mordo's back when he leaves.

Mordo keeps moving until he is out of the Sanctum. He moves down Bleecker and beyond. Not to the subway, he cannot stand still. Mordo paces the night streets of New York. He dodges giggling NYU students and tourists who pause inside intersections for photos.

Mordo does not stop until he reaches his apartment, and even then he moves. His hands wring furiously in front of him. His teeth worry the inside of a cheek.

Tonight was supposed to be the night. The plan was perfect.

Mordo did not want to see what he’s now seen or know what he now knows. Knowledge and vision do not change the sins that have been or the dangers forthcoming.

But Mordo could not do it. He could not kill Stephen Strange. Now, he’s left to figure out what this means.

*The End*


End file.
